Inside the black cut-out form of the hooded man, an image appeared, displaying the grasslands of the planet Dantooine. The scene looked familiar to Gantoris after seeing the progress tapes delivered by Wedge Antilles.
But now he saw Imperial lasers striking down, leveling colony buildings, giant armored walkers striding across the savanna, blasting anything that moved, igniting the temporary living units. People ran screaming. His people.
Gantoris recognized most of their faces, but before he could name them, they dissolved one by one in brilliant flashes as they tried to flee. The trees blazed in conical bonfires; black clumpy smoke rose in jagged swirls.
“You lie! This is a trick!”
“I have no need of lies when the truth is so devastating. You can do nothing to stop it. Do you enjoy watching your people die? Does that not spark your anger? In your anger lies strength.”
Gantoris saw the old man Warton, whom he had known his entire life, standing in the middle of the holocaust. Warton stared around him, hands dangling at his sides, frozen in shock, until a thick green bolt cut him down.
“No!” Gantoris shouted.
“Let loose your anger. Make me stronger.”
“No!” he repeated, turning his head away from the images of burned ruins and blackened bodies.
“They are all dead. All of them,” the dark man taunted. “No survivors.”
Gantoris ignited his lightsaber and lunged at the dark man.
With an insistent bleeping Artoo-Detoo woke Luke from his nightmares. He snapped awake, using a Jedi technique to dispel the weariness and shock of the sudden waking.
“What is it, Artoo?”
The droid whistled, telling him something about a message waiting in the command center. Luke shrugged into his soft robe and hurried across the cold floor in the early light of planetrise. Taking the turbolift down to the second level of the temple, he entered the once-bustling command center.
“Artoo, bring up the lights.” He picked his path through the equipment, dust-covered chairs, shut-down computer consoles, document tables cluttered with debris. He powered on the communications station that Wedge had insisted on installing during his last supply run.
The image of Han Solo waited impatiently for him, fidgeting in the holofield. When he saw Luke appear in the transmission locus, Han grinned up at him. “Hey, Luke! Sorry I forgot to account for time differential. Not even dawn there, is it?”
Luke brushed his brown hair into place with his fingers. “Even Jedi need to sleep sometime, Han.”
Han laughed. “Well, you’ll be getting less sleep when your new student arrives. I just wanted to tell you that Kyp Durron has had enough of his vacation. I think after all that time in the spice mines, he got used to being miserable. The closest thing to the spice mines I could think of was your Jedi academy—that way he can work all day long, but at least he’ll be improving himself in the process.”
Luke smiled at his old friend. “I’d be honored to have him join us, Han. I’ve been waiting for him. He has the strongest potential of all the trainees I’ve seen so far.”
“Just wanted to let you know he’s coming,” Han said. “I’m trying to arrange for the next available transport to Yavin 4.”
Luke frowned. “Why don’t you just bring him in the Falcon?”
Han hung his head, looking extremely troubled. “Because I don’t own the Falcon anymore.”
“What?”
Han seemed filled with embarrassment, eager to end the communication. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll tell Leia hello for you and give the kids a hug.”
“All right, Han, but—”
Han gave a sheepish grin and quickly terminated the transmission.
Luke continued to stare at the blank space where Han’s image had been. First his nightmare of a dark man masquerading as Anakin Skywalker, and now the grim news that Han had lost the Millennium Falcon—
Luke heard a disturbance coming down the hall: clumsy footsteps slapping on the stone floor, panicked shouts. He looked up, ready to scold one of his students for such blatant lack of control, when the cloned alien Dorsk 81 rushed into the control center. “Master Skywalker! You must come immediately!”
Luke sensed waves of horror and misery spilling from his candidate. “What is it?” he asked. “Use the calming technique I showed you.”
But Dorsk 81 grabbed his arm. “This way!” The yellow-olive alien urged him out of the cluttered control room. Luke sensed widening ripples of alarm traveling like an earthquake through the solid stone of the temple.
They ran along the flagstoned corridors, up the turbolift, and into the section of living quarters where the trainees made their homes.
A sour, smoky stench filled the air, and Luke felt an icy lump in his stomach as he pushed cautiously forward. Hard-bitten Kam Solusar and addled Streen both stood outside the open doorway to Gantoris’s quarters, looking pasty and ill.
Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second, then moved through the doorway.
Inside the small stone chamber, he saw what was left of Gantoris. The body lay crisped and blackened on the floor, burned from the inside out. Singed stains on the flagstones showed where he had thrashed about in the conflagration. Gantoris’s skin flaked in black, peeling ashes over his powdery bones. Rising wisps of steam curled from the remaining fabric of his Jedi robe.
On the floor the newly constructed lightsaber lay where Gantoris had dropped it, as if he had tried to fight something—and lost.
Luke leaned against the cool stone wall to catch his balance. His vision blurred, but he could not tear his gaze from his dead student sprawled in front of him.
By now the other eleven trainees had gathered. Luke grasped the worn stone bricks at the edge of the door until even the rounded corners bruised his fingers. He applied a Jedi calming technique three times before he felt confident enough to trust his voice. The words tasted like wet ash in his mouth, as Yoda had told him so long ago.
“Beware the dark side,” he said.
11
After eight seemingly random hyperspace jumps to shake any possible pursuit, Ackbar took his B-wing fighter along the correct vector to the hidden planet Anoth. Terpfen had “borrowed” the fighter for him, claiming to have purged the records of its existence; Ackbar didn’t want to know how his mechanic had gotten through the security systems so easily.
For years isolated Anoth had been a haven for the Jedi children, protected by its perfect obscurity and anonymity. The twins had gone home to Coruscant only a month or two before, but the youngest child—one-year-old baby Anakin—remained under the protection of Leia’s devoted servant Winter, far from prying Imperial eyes or dark-side influences that could corrupt the baby’s fragile Force-sensitive mind.
As space snapped into sharp focus, Ackbar saw the clustered multiple planet of Anoth. The world was composed of three large fragments orbiting a common center of mass. The two largest pieces hovered nearly in contact, sharing a poisonous stormy atmosphere. The third and more distant fragment orbited in a precarious, almost-safe position where Ackbar, Luke, and Winter had set up a hidden stronghold.
Skittering electrostatic discharges danced from the two touching pieces of Anoth, and the ionized fury bathed the habitable chunk in electrical storms that served to mask the planet from prying eyes. The entire system was unstable, and in a blink of cosmic time it would destroy itself, but for the last century or so it had been possible for humanoid life to establish a foothold there.
Ackbar brought his B-wing in on close approach through the deep-purple skies of Anoth. Sparks discharged from the wing of his fighter, but he felt no threat. This was not like flying through the storms of Vortex.
Inside the cramped B-wing, Ackbar wore only a flightsuit over his big frame, not his admiral’s uniform. Later he would leave the “borrowed” fighter in the Calamarian shipyards, where a New Republic pilot could shuttle it back to Coruscant. Ackbar would not be flying a starfighter again, so he had no need of
it.
He sent a brief signal to inform Winter of his arrival, but he did not respond to her surprise or her questions. Switching off the fighter’s comm unit, he rehearsed how he would tell her all that had happened. Then he concentrated on guiding the B-wing in for a landing.
Below him the surface of Anoth was a craggy forest of rocky spires, sharp ledges, and clawlike peaks that were riddled with caves left behind when volatile inclusions in the rocks had evaporated over the centuries, leaving only glasslike rock.
Inside the labyrinth of smooth tunnels Winter had made a temporary home with the Jedi babies. Now she had only one child left to care for; and in another year, when Anakin reached the age of two, Winter could return to Coruscant and to active service with the New Republic government.
The small white sun never brought much daylight to Anoth, bathing the world in Gothic purple twilight lit by stark flashes of interplanetary lightning discharges. Ackbar and Luke Skywalker had found this planet, choosing it from among the possibilities as the safest place to hide the Jedi children. And now Ackbar had come one last time before returning to his homeworld of Calamari.
He felt sympathy for baby Anakin, who had not known a more welcoming place during his first year. Ackbar had always felt a close attachment to the third child, but he had come to say goodbye before fading from public view forever.
He flew the B-wing in among the spired forests and rock outcroppings. It reminded him of the tall fluted towers of the Cathedral of Winds on Vortex. That thought gave him a stab of pain, and he tried not to think of it further.
He cruised the ship in among the rocks, flying confidently as he arrowed toward the opening to the network of caves. With landing jets and a careful manipulation of repulsorlifts, Ackbar managed to land the starfighter smoothly on the wide grotto floor.
As he powered down the engines and prepared to disembark, a metal crash door swung open. A tall rigid-looking woman stood at the doorway. Her robes and her white hair clearly identified her as Leia’s ageless servant Winter. Even for a human, she looked strikingly distinctive to Ackbar.
He climbed stiffly out of his ship and turned his salmon-colored head away to keep from meeting her eyes. He saw with a backward glance that the one-year-old baby toddled at Winter’s feet, making happy noises, curious to see the new visitor. Ackbar felt a shudder go through him as he realized he would probably never see the dark-haired boy again.
Winter spoke in her flat, no-nonsense voice. He had never heard her upset before. “Admiral Ackbar, please tell me what has happened.”
He turned to face her, showing his flightsuit, his lack of military insignia. “I am no longer an admiral,” he said, “and it is a long story.”
Ackbar sat eating a meal of reconstituted rations that Winter had somehow managed to make palatable. As he told her every detail of the tragedy on Vortex and how he had resigned from his service, Winter did not appear judgmental. She simply listened, blinking rarely, nodding even less often.
Baby Anakin crouched on Ackbar’s lap, cooing and reaching up in curiosity to pat Ackbar’s clammy skin and touch his huge glassy eyes. Anakin giggled as the round eyes swiveled in various directions to avoid being poked by pudgy fingers.
“Will you stay here for an evening’s rest—?” Winter said. Her sentence cut off sharply, as if she had been about to call him admiral.
“No,” Ackbar said, holding the baby against him with flipper-hands. “I can’t. No one must suspect that I have come here, and if I delay too long, they will realize I have not gone directly to Calamari.”
Winter hesitated and then spoke in a voice that seemed less able to conceal emotion than it normally did. “Ackbar, you know I have the greatest respect for your abilities. It would honor me if you would stay here with me instead of going into hiding on your homeworld.”
Ackbar looked at the human woman and felt a surge of emotion well up inside him. Winter’s mere suggestion had been powerful enough to strip away layers of guilt and shame with which he had buried himself.
When he did not answer immediately, she pressed further. “I’m all alone here, and I could use your help. It gets lonely for the baby … and for me.”
Ackbar finally managed to speak, avoiding Winter’s gaze but giving his answer before he could change his mind. “Your offer honors me, Winter, but I am not worthy. At least not at the moment. I must go to Calamari and search for peace there. If I—” The words caught in his throat again, and he realized he was trembling. “If I find my peace, perhaps I shall return to you—and the baby.”
“I—-we’ll be here waiting, if you change your mind,” she said, then escorted him back to the hangar grotto.
Ackbar felt her watching him as he climbed back into the B-wing. He lifted the ship on its repulsorlift jets and turned to see her standing at the doorway. He flicked his running lights to signal her.
Winter raised a hand in sad goodbye. Then, with her other hand, she made Anakin’s pudgy arm wave to him too.
Ackbar’s starfighter soared into space, leaving them behind.
Back on Coruscant, Terpfen lay sick and shivering in his private quarters, trying with all his might to resist. But in the end the organic circuitry inside what was left of his brain took over.
Moving with forced steps, he descended to the dispatching and receiving network in the lower levels of the old Imperial Palace. No one watched him in the echoing, crowded room as diplomatic droids and packages came in and left, streaking off to various embassies and spaceports on Coruscant, bearing important dispatches.
Terpfen coded his secret message, summarizing information he had received from the hidden tracking device he had planted on Ackbar’s ship. He sealed the message inside a coffin-sized hyperspace courier tube and shielded the entire apparatus. He glanced around suspiciously before he keyed in Admiral Ackbar’s personal diplomatic security code, which would allow it to bypass all checks and tariff points. No one would have thought to revoke Ackbar’s access yet.
The routing doors opened up at the far end of the center, and the silvery message canister rose on its launching fields. In a reflex action Terpfen reached out, trying to grasp the slick sides of the canister, scraping with the sharp points of his hands—but the container rocketed out, picking up speed as it soared into the Coruscant sky.
Terpfen had programmed five alternate routes to discourage tracking. The message canister would arrive unhindered and without delay at the Imperial Military Academy on Carida. The coded message would be displayed for the eyes of Ambassador Furgan only—divulging the location of the secret planet where the last Jedi baby was hidden.
12
“You’ll do just fine, kid,” Hen said, trying to maintain his roguish grin.
Standing at the door of Han and Leia’s quarters, Kyp Durron nodded. Han noticed a faint trembling around the young man’s lips. “I’ll do my best, Han. You know that.”
Suddenly unable to say another word, Han embraced Kyp, silently cursing the stinging tears that rose to his eyes. “You’ll be the greatest Jedi ever. You’ll give even Luke a run for his money.”
“I doubt that,” Kyp said. He broke away and averted his face but not before Han caught the shimmer of tears in his eyes too.
“Wait,” Han said, “I’ve got something for you before you go.” He ducked back inside and returned to the door with a soft package. Kyp took it with a tentative smile and unwrapped the top layers of paper.
Han watched the young man’s expression. Kyp reached into the package and withdrew a flowing black cape that glittered with subliminal reflective threads, as if it had been woven out of a clear starry night.
“Lando gave it to me—feeling guilty about winning the Falcon, I guess—but I can’t wear stuff like this. I want you to have it. You deserve something nice, after all those years you spent in the dirty spice mines.”
Kyp laughed. “You mean so I can dress up for all those formal occasions at the Jedi academy?” His expression became serious. “Thanks, Han … fo
r everything. But I’ve got to be going. General Antilles is escorting the Sun Crusher to Yavin, and I’ll be going with him. He’ll drop me off at Luke’s academy.”
“Good luck,” Han said.
Kyp said, “I’m sorry you lost the Falcon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Han said. “She’s a hunk of junk anyway.”
“You got that right,” Kyp said with a smile, but both of them knew he didn’t mean it.
“Want me to walk with you down to the hangar?” Han asked, realizing as he said it that he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Naw,” Kyp said, turning away from the door. “I hate long goodbyes. See you around.”
“Sure, kid,” Han said. He watched Kyp’s back for a long time as the young man walked with a feigned bouncy step down the corridors to the turbolift.
Han thought about going back into his room, then decided he’d rather go for a drink instead. Leia was in yet another late-night Council meeting with Mon Mothma, and the kids were already in bed, so Han left Threepio with instructions to remain powered up so he could baby-sit.
Han eventually returned to the lounge where he and Lando had played sabacc for possession of the Falcon.
The window looked out across the sweeping geometrical skyline of the rebuilt Imperial City. Towering metal and transparisteel pillars stretched to rarefied heights. Warning beacons and transmitting towers blinked in multicolored patterns as flying craft swooped on the updrafts between the tall buildings.
At another table a hammerheaded Ithorian ambassador sat by himself next to a small musical synthesizer. He hummed along with the atonal noises and plucked small leaves off a fresh ferny-looking snack. A pug-faced Ugnaught chittered and played electronic dice with a well-groomed Ranat. The bartender droid drifted from one table to another, attempting to be of service.
Han soon lost himself in thought, wondering where he had come to, thinking about how much his life had changed since his years as a spice smuggler for Jabba the Hutt and then as a general in the Rebel Alliance.
Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy II: Dark Apprentice Page 11
